Reuters on Thursday quoted the disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk as claiming he spent part of research funds he is accused of misappropriating to buy mammoth cells from the Russian mafia. The news agency quoted Hwang as testifying in the Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday, “Some of the money was spent in contacting the Russia Mafia as we tried to clone mammoths.” Hwang said he spent W1 billion (US$1=W950) on research-related external activities but no money for any purpose other than research.

In July, to a prosecutor who asked what became of W500 million of altogether W2.1 billion in research funding held in an account under a false name, Hwang said, “A portion of that went to our cloning work on a tiger and mammoth. For security reasons I was not able to disclose this before, but we attempted to clone a mammoth three times, failing on each occasion. The tiger was a Korean tiger and the mammoth was from Russia.” Hwang offered no concrete facts to back up his mammoth claim and did not mention the Russian connection at the time.

If Hwang is convicted of misappropriation of research funds, he could receive a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and up to three years for his alleged bioethics breaches.

But a source close to the presiding judge said, “Reports in the foreign press made it sound like Hwang had actually given funds to a large Russian criminal organization to obtain cells of a mammoth. But the gist of the testimony was, there were in fact instances when the team was traveling to desolate areas on expeditions and had money extorted from them in the name of ‘travel taxes.’ How do you show receipts for that? It seems to be a case reporting gone wild.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )